quote from above:What's sick about this is that the British establishment destroyed the Sinhalese people completely. Completely and purposely, sadistically. Stole their land, humiliated and massacred their government, made it Imperial policy to erase every shred of self-respect the Sinhalese had left. You can talk about the Nazis all day long, but for my money nothing they did was as gross as what you find out when you actually look into the history of British-Sinhalese relations. If you can even call them "relations"; I guess a murder-rape is a relation, sort of.But nobody knows about it. Weird, huh? Nothing weirds me out more than the total news blackout the Brits have managed to put on all the sick shiat they did to brown and black people all over the world. They had a system, and it worked. They'd grab some paradise island in the tropics, use the Royal Navy to wall it off from the rest of the world, and crush the local tribe. If the locals resisted, the Brits would starve them to death, shoot them down, infect them with smallpox or get them addicted to opium-whatever they had to do to gang-rape the locals so bad that they'd lose the will to resist.

And to this day, they don't catch even a little bit of Hell for it. Everybody thinks the Brits are all cute and harmless. You're all a bunch of suckers for those suave accents, you suckers! The truth is that compared to the Brits, the Nazis you're always yammering about were a gang of ...

What are you talking about? The British accent is a mark of evil known throughout the galaxy.

And your own country has a history of the exact same at the least. History is the word however.

I WILL NOT feel guilty about stuff done while my ancestors worked for basic bread down a mine in Northern England. Sorry, I just will not. I especially will not listen to demands from people who are themselves rich and powerful off the backs of poverty stricken masses in their own countries, who they treat abominably, as they try to deflect with nationalist tripe.

Me farkin' too. My ancestors were probably in the same mine as yours: around Newcastle. Being white does not make me responsible for the sins of others.

Me farkin' too. My ancestors were probably in the same mine as yours: around Newcastle. Being white does not make me responsible for the sins of others.

Yep, my mothers father was a Newcastle miner from many generations of same. My fathers side were midlands miners. My father started in the mines ffs (quit after a year and trained as an engineer because he didn't want to die of lung disease like his dad). They never oppressed anyone and didnt gain a farking thing from anyone else doing so.

Meh, that's diamond's been taken as war booty from a succession of rulers in India by a Persian ruler, taken as war booty by a Afghani ruler from the Persian ruler, then taken as war booty back to India from Afghanistan, before the British took it.

It's only fair that the next person to gain possession of the diamond is forced to do it by ripping it out of the dying hands of the last possessor.

ObeliskToucher:Serve them right if the Brits, given its ownership history (mostly Punjab, with late ownership by Sikh & Moghul Empires), "gave it back" to Pakistan...

Yes, admittedly most of my knowledge on the subject comes from Flashman, but I was wondering why the fark India thinks a diamond we took as spoils for conquering Lahore, which is in Pakistan, somehow belongs to them.

andhravodu:I think you came off a little condescending in your description of India. Your impressions of India are a little dated. The rich class in India is comparable to any of the world's elite. The middle class has been enjoying a boom of sorts. Until 5-10 years ago, almost every body who got the chance immigrated to firstworld countries, but with the depresssion and newer opportunities, there is a lot of reverse migration back to India.

It was meant to be condescending and I know things have greatly improved over the years. It was just the kind of argument India would have made if people started to demand various items back from them. That they are a poor country and thus are somehow exempt, but Great Britain is in Europe and European countries were the last countries which did the whole "sail around the world for plunder" bit, and they profited greatly because of it. Therefore it would be somehow logical that Great Britain has to give shiat back while you never read anything about India offering to give countries back the stuff that was plundered from them 150+ years ago.

You also don't read that the stone has to go back to the descendants of the first owner, from whom it was also confiscated by someone with a bigger stick. No, it somehow needs to go back to the last owner before Great Britain got their hands on it because if Brits steal something it is terribly wrong. Even if that item was only in the possession of the robbed party because of thievery/conquest somewhere else in the past. That stone changed hands with every regime change.

Treygreen13:Fano: germ78: Kinda off-topic in a way, but I was very disappointed by the Hope diamond. I thought it would be a fist-sized gem, but it's only as big as 3 quarters stacked on each other. farking. Lame.

You must have been thinking of the famed Baseball Diamond.

The Cullinan Diamond was fist-sized.

I blame you for the 3 hours I just lost learning about many different diamonds, the British Crown Jewels, Oliver Cromwell, the Norman invasion, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, castle construction, and various British parliaments.

So you don't believe in "returnism" but you believe in stealing. Cool ethics bro!

THIS. Even if you're not giving it back, at least try and pretend you understand you stole it. FFS. I can understand why you wouldn't want to return it, politics is a dirty game, but you farked up, admit it and move on.

Funny thing, HE didn't steal it. He wasn't even farking alive when it happened. So no, he really doesn't need to understand that.

This is exactly like the blacks demanding reparations for slavery, in the United States. fark you. You weren't a slave, so unless you are going to do forced labor for the next few years, you aren't getting any reparations. Wellfare I guess isn't a reparation.

You are comparing apples and oranges. This is a physical item that was stolen and can be given back. A better comparison would be things the Nazis stole during WW2 from other countries now being in Germany's possessions. The other countries ask for them back and Germany says "F*ck you, we don't believe in returnism".

So who do you propose the diamond be given back to? The people who stole it, then gave it to Britain willingly?

Fun fact: For whatever reason, Cambodia wanted to pave the floor of their Pagoda of the Jade Buddha with silver. Their colonists France said "No problem! We'll make the tiles for you as a show of of how nice we are!"

So Cambodia sent them 20+ tons of silver. The returned tiles weighed about 1/3 of that in total, and the tiles all had four fleur-de-lis stamped on both sides.